You need to be passionate about the creative work that you're doing, but you need to be kind of emotionally separated from how people react to it or how it does. Those things should be secondary, and primary should be your love of the creative act.

He is not sweet or gentle or particularly kind. But he is smart and brave, and even though he saved me, he treated me like I was strong. That is all I need to know.

We believe that peace is hard-won, That sometimes it is necessary to fight for peace. But more than that, we believe that Justice is more important than peace.

I breathe in. The water will wash my wounds clean. I breathe out. My mother submerged me in water when I was a baby, to give me to God. It has been a long time since I thought about God, but I think about him now. It is only natural. I am glad, suddenly, that I shot Eric in the foot instead of the head.

When you're a writer, you hear your internal critic, and that's really hard to get over. And then sometimes you hear critiques from classmates and stuff. But when a book comes out, it's just hundreds of opinions and you have to learn to separate out the ones you want to listen to or figure out many you want to listen to.

Don't you dare try to apologize." His voice shakes. "This is not something you can bandage with a word or two and some hugging, or something.

My parents did love each other. Enough to forsake plans and factions. Enough to defy “faction before blood.” Blood before faction--no, love before faction, always. - Tris Prior